Limited Edition Desertion

**By the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021** ‘A careful and heartfelt exploration of the way memory inevitably consoles and disappoints us’ Sunday Times ‘Beautifully written and pleasurable … The work of a maestro’ Guardian ‘An absorbing novel about abandonment and loss’ Daily Telegraph ___________________________________ Early one morning in 1899, in a small town along the coast from Mombasa, Hassanali sets out for the mosque. But he never gets there, for out of the desert stumbles an ashen and exhausted Englishman who collapses at his feet. That man is Martin Pearce – writer, traveller and something of an Orientalist. After Pearce has recuperated, he visits Hassanali to thank him for his rescue and meets Hassanali’s sister Rehana; he is immediately captivated. In this crumbling town on the edge of civilised life, with the empire on the brink of a new century, a passionate love affair begins that brings two cultures together and which will reverberate through three generations and across continents.

Abdulrazak Gurnah is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. He is the authorof ten novels: Memory of Departure, Pilgrims Way, Dottie, Paradise (shortlistedfor the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award), Admiring Silence, Bythe Sea (longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the LosAngeles Times Book Award), Desertion (shortlistedfor the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) The Last Gift, Gravel Heart, and Afterlives, which wasshortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Fiction 2021 and longlisted for theWalter Scott Prize. He was Professor of English at the University ofKent, and was a Man Booker Prize judge in 2016. He lives in Canterbury.